Fast warm up ideas: Oil to coolant heat exchanger

[gumby79]

On Cummins the oil cooler /herter is between the pump and filter. Inside the block right next to the block heater. There is no bypass on the heater/ cooler. There is a pressure bypass that bypasses the filter when the pressure is too high, from excessive viscosity restricting the flow through the filter, or a dirty filter.
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The oil pan transmits heat to the oil from the block,I'll be it minimal. Otherwise the coolent based blockheater would not improve cold starting by reducing the viscosity enough to allow crainking. But I want more....to ease starting and improve MPG.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by Lemmy

Those sandwich plates are designed to allow the oil to be cooled with the coolant, not heated. Good ones are thermostatic and won't flow any coolant until everything is up to temp.

That would be easy to fix.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by gumby79

I am planning to use the ehxsost from my diesel fired coolant heater (yet to be installed, got the parts gust have to finish the planning and will be out of town for 2more weeks). Problem is EGTs have been measured at 200°c witch is at or near flash point of the oil248°c.

There was an artic cold weather kit for the hmmwv that took coolant heater exhaust and used it to warm the bottom of the oil pan. I always figured it only heated the oil on one side only so the exhaust doesn't over cook the oil.

[Daox]

So, it seems as though if you have a Honda, you can pick up an oil warmer/cooler VERY inexpensively. They sell on ebay for around $10 used. Since its not a wearable item that sounds like an amazing deal. However, the ones for $10 are made for sport bikes. I'm not 100% sure that the housing is large enough for car/truck oil filters. However, for more money one can find one specifically used on a car engine. If you do try one of the bike ones, just make sure it is the type that allows you to mount a filter on the end. Some of them are capped off on the ends.

One end will always look like this:


The other end MUST look like this:




If the end looks like this, you will have no place to mount your filter:




Also, a lot of these auctions do not come with the bolt that holds the warmer/cooler in place and allows mounting of your oil filter. So, you will either need to make sure that your item comes with it, or find one separately. You'll also need an o-ring or seal so it seals to the block. The bolts look like this:







For those of us who do not own a Honda, or other make that uses M20x1.5 threads for the oil filter, what are we to do? We have a few options. So far I've found these vehicles that use similar oil warmer/coolers:

Early 2000 to mid 2000 Jaguars (unknown thread).

Numerous Mazdas have these, the Miata, 3, 5, etc. (unknown thread).

GM & Chevy have one that I found for the Camero / Corvette.

Toyota Tundra 4.7L has a 3/4-16 thread and probably uses larger filters suitable for larger engines. These also cost a bit more. Cheapest I found was $38 shipped.

By far the most prevalent was the VW / Audi oil coolers. They have a few vehicles with oil coolers on them with 3/4-16 threads. Here is what it looks like. Prices on ebay varied quite a bit for these. Again watch so you get the bolt and the seal with it or you'll have to buy it separate.




Yamaha, Suzuki, Triumph, and Kawasaki bikes also have oil coolers. I am lead to believe they use the M20x1.5 thread as they seem to have interchangeable oil filters with Honda bikes. I haven't dug real deep into this though.

So, those are the warmer / cooolers I found. I stopped searching after prices hit about $50. I think there are plenty of choices, and if the motorcycle warmers fit a car they are really cheap.

Of course, one alternative is to buy a cooler and make your own bolt for it. In that case, it almost doesn't matter what cooler you go with as long as it fits up and seals to your block.

I think this mod is really a great idea for those of us who make a lot of shorter trips.

[oil pan 4]

Those are pretty much never found on domestic cars.

[Daox]

I did some more digging just to see how oil temperature follows coolant temperature. I found these charts posted by members of a BMW forum. As I anticipated, oil temperature lags coolant temperature pretty drastically as Oil Pan's pressure information suggested. Of course, I'm not sure where this oil temperature sensor is located. I would guess that it is inside the oil pump. So, the oil wouldn't have time to be heated by the engine block much. Once it has been pumped through the engine it will obviously pick up heat. However, without a temperature sensor in the return flow of the oil we have no way of really knowing. But, we really want to be pulling warm oil to begin with. Its not just the friction of the engine that is reduced with lower viscosity oil, its also the work that the oil pump has to do as well. Pumping thicker oil and thus having higher oil pressure requires more power from the engine.

These charts show two different trips. The first one is a city drive he did, the second one shows a trip to his work with some highway driving. From the charts you can see that coolant temperature starts around 30C / 86F, so this is obviously a summer drive. Coolant temp hits ~100C after only about 3 minutes of driving. How long does it take the oil to warm up to that temperature? Nearly 20 minutes! By that time, my car would have already been sitting in my work parking lot for about 5 mintues.

[oil pan 4]

Yes 20 minute oil warm up time.
I'm pretty sure that there was an old post on here saying pretty much exactly that.

[Daox]

I'd like to do some testing with the Insight since it already has a sandwich plate coolant warmer installed on it. All I would need to do is crimp the line to see a with/without scenario to see how effective it really is.

Of course, I would need to add a sensor for measuring the coolant temperature. I think something like this thermometer mounted in a modified oil pan drain plug would work nicely. Or, would it be good enough to just strap the sensor right to the bottom of the oil pan and tape some insulation around it? What do you guys think?

[oil pan 4]

Sticking a thermoresistor or thermocouple to the pan under some HVAC tape would work just fine.

[AlexanderB]

The engine in my track car has one, (as-stock) its plumbed into the hot side radiator hose behind the thermostat (so it only receives hot water after the engine is up to temp.) I've considered either dual-stacking it with a thermostat oil cooler, or plumbing it in differently so it would receive cooler coolant. However, just keeping the coolant temperature low overall by keeping the cooling system efficient seems to do the job.

I also took one and installed it on my diesel, but never got around to plumbing it in. I was going to put in in-line with the heater matrix so it would help heat up faster.

Originally Posted by Daox

Toyota like many domestics I'd assume uses a 3/4"-16 thread.

Toyota uses m20x1.5 thread in the rest of the world, I can't imagine them changing *that* on US-sold cars..